Progress Update

Over the Easter holidays we didn't get done as much as we wanted (does that sound familiar to my fellow house bloggers?) but still a lot - 7 pine trees have been cut down, the remaining plaster in the big room and kitchen removed, the kitchen sink is out (the water I feared last time actually came out of the fixture rather than the pipes in the wall), gas meter box installed. I also removed any wiring that won't be kept and threatened to fall off the walls with the plaster removed. Good choice - it seems the entire place was wired by morons. I particularly liked the screw driven through the conduit feeding one ceiling light...



The yard looks great without the pines!



Gotta love the precious brickwork around the chimney... this will have to be rebuilt completely I guess.



Most important project now: fix up the garden house enough to make it liveable for summer, i.e. fix the rotted section of the floor (where the roof had collapsed), clean it up a little and install some permanent wiring instead of the extension cord running along the fence. My uncle offered to visit us and help in summer, and he needs somewhere to sleep.

The plumber finally sent an estimate for the central heat... let's just say I see some quality time with pipe cutters, soldering torch and lots of copper pipe in our future.
By the way, the old plumbing is galvanized... heck, I mean the bathroom was installed in 1976 or 77! Who still used galvanized pipe then? Our bathroom in Vienna was plumbed with copper in 1962! So much for reusing what we can... accounts to nothing. I positively hate messing around with galvanized pipe and thour water is extremely hard... so likely they're almost full anyway.

Oh and another nice thing... when we arrived the front hall had flooded. Why? Well, even though pines are evergreen they do drop needles once in a while. If there's a roof underneath the tree, the needles will eventually end up in the gutters where they will sit until they're removed. If they aren't they'll eventually compost, which they did. Once my dad cleaned out the gutters, they were no longer clogged - instead they leaked like a sieve. Completely rusted out. That's fine, nicely matches the PVC gutters in the rear which slope in a nice wobbly pattern from rafter to rafter...

Leftovers of the original project...

Of course, the pigsty didn't magically disappear from our property...
Last summer we removed the brick stalls (using a 10 pound sledge hammer), the entire concrete floor and most of the plaster. One wall was declared good enough to leave plastered. The ceiling is still shot and the roof still got holes, that's how the place has been sitting ever since. We might attempt to combat the rising damp issue enough to turn it into a work shop, but getting the new house liveable is higher up on the priority list right now. We're also considering putting in decent windows and a decent door in the long run, but that's it. No second floor, no stairway, nothing.